Australian album of the year: NUN – NUNNot fair that zeitgeist is so overused in the flippant parlance of cultural mockery! Because, you know, it genuinely captures what it is that makes this a great and important album. Poor Melbourne struggles with its multiple personalities; often wriggling around the nexus of a sound that’s not quite Hamburg, a little bit Sheffield, and very nearly Cleveland, but almost certainly mid-August 1983. So it matters a lot that when Nun gathered in Tom Hardisty’s Thornbury bedroom to put together this album, they didn’t waste any time pawing over maps. They just got to work and pulled off a record that, sure, is referential – but is of its time and place. I love it.

Sun Kil Moon image courtesy of listendammit.com

International album of the year: Sun Kil Moon – BenjiMark Kozelek’s well-publicised wig-flip at Adam Granduciel (a.k.a. The War on Drugs) didn’t do him any favours, but this album is so impossibly and devastatingly heartfelt and frank that no artist need ever bother trying to express her or his feelings about his or her mother, father, cousin, school friend or uncle with any authenticity ever again. Most people will dislike this album on some level, and dislike Mark Kozelek on many others, but I for one think it’s the standout record of the year…by a mile.Honourable mentions:Real Estate – Atlas John Southworth – Niagara

I’m not aware of too many songs that make me so wholly happy and sad and certain that the world is an okay place as this song.

Honourable mentions John Southworth – "Hey I Got News for You"All I can say about this song is that when I was awoken one night, not so long ago, by the mightiest thunderclap I ever did hear, all I had circling in my mind were the tenor sax honks that close out this song’s moody loop. I was mightily disoriented, and slightly creeped out. Not to mention “Ten thousand monkey birds flying over Delaware…all the clichés are true – true love is in the air…” has to be the best line I’ve heard all year. Sun Kil Moon – "Dogs"Amongst the spirit-wrenching trip that is Benji, sits this mighty, driven explication of Kozelek’s first tastes of love and lust.

Best reissue: Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las VegasWhat, with its piccolo snares and cheap reverb, 1990 always sells as the nadir of production values. Somehow the Cocteau Twins released this record in the midst of this, and gained new fans without disillusioning their old ones. No mean feat (even if peopledounfairly hold them responsible for making space on the musical landscape for Enya). This reissue has done justice to their vision, and brought new life to their most accessible and rapturous work.

Best album artwork: Stara Rzeka – 10” EPThe Infinite Greyscale collective never fail to produce exquisite works of art, and Stara Rzeka (aka Kuba Ziołek) has worked with them to ensure that this untitled 10” EP is no exception. But don’t just look, listen. I’d recommend taking a step back to last years’s gem Cień chmury nad ukrytym polem before getting your hands on a copy of this little treat.

Worst… Ariel PinkI hate to end on a downer but I certainly didn’t want to start on one…and throwing one in the middle made no sense. So here I go…my gong for worst artist/album/whatever of 2014 goes to Ariel Pink. It’s just that so much has been made of Ariel Pink’s metacritical transcendence that I’m starting to get the feeling that people just aren’t listening to the records. I’ve endured a couple of his releases, and followed his misogynistic blurtings (and their accompanying analyses), and after all that, I had about four-and-a-half minutes’ energy left to consider the video for “Put Your Number in my Phone” a mildly clever representation of outsider ennui in trash suburban mall culture. Then what?Here’s to 2015.By Andy Wear